WILD WINGS

WINNER OF THE 2002 NATIONAL OUTDOOR BOOK AWARD

Poems by Jane Yolen
Photographs by Jason Stemple
Boyds Mills 2002
ISBN# 1-56397-904-7 Boyds Mills hardcover
Isbn# 1-59078-173-2 Boyds Mills paperback

My father passed along his love of birds and birdwatching to me long ago. He gave me many pairs of binoculars and helped me purchase my first big lens several years ago. With this lens I began to stalk the birds and gather many photographs. Once again, my mother saw these pictures and turned them into a book. This project is the closest to my heart to date, and was the best thanks I could give to my father for helping me on this path. My favorite spread from Wild Wings is Heron in the Grass. I shot it on a trip with my wife to the Everglades, repeating a trip I had taken almost 20 years earlier with my father.

     Available in Boyds Mills hardcover and paperback.

What reveiwers have said: "How startling its imagery--especially when paired with exemplary photography ... Young readers ... will be inspired by one of the genre's best." -- School Library Journal

"The pictures are ... so sharply focused that each tiny feather on the anhinga's neck, each lapidary detail of the turkey buzzard's scarlet head, is plain to see. Yolen writes with terse lucidity ... and moments of beauty. Recently hatched ornithologists and fans of Yolen's Bird Watch hoping for more of the same will warble over this fresh gathering of words and images." -- Kirkus

"Instead of poems leading to photographs, in this book strikingly lovely photos inspired the poems, resulting in a beautifully integrated, finely designed whole, with poems and photos set to best advantage. Photographer Stemple, Yolen's son, provides the pictures, which are themselves a sort of visual poetry. ... Yolen's poetry is elegantly spare, with a purity of thought and language that will send readers back to the photo with new eyes, which in turn will inspire them to read the poem again. " -- Booklist

"Stunning photographs...thought-provoking poems ..." -- Manchester, Ct. Journal Inquirer

 See Jane Yolen's description of this book.

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